Llackamas Print
Commentary 3
Wednesday. Oct. 26, 2005
Ninjas or pirates?
The greatest question of our time
are loud. They tend
to advertise their
presence to every
one around them.
All the ninja has
| to do is sneak
up behind the
pirate, and it’s
A game over.
Secondly,
Lstrations by Jeff Sorensen Clackamas Print
ninjas
have
much better
training than pirates when
are too
it comes to fighting. A
fore for
ninja will have had years
of intense, focused train
to handle
ing for one-on-one combat;
a pirate has maybe had a
couple of informal sword
fighting lessons.
hentary Editor
Further
compound
ing the problem for the
have nothing against pirate is that he’s proba
bly never seen the ninja’s
Mrates are awesome.
style of fighting before, so
■ sail cool ships; they he doesn’t know how to
Hlfight; they plunder,
defend against it.
■ and get drunk; and
Now, don’t try to tell
■ always get the girl.
me that the pirate has an
Elet's be honest here. If advantage because he has a
■have a fight between a gun. Do you have any idea
Hand a ninja, the ninja how difficult it is to fire a
Hg to win.
flintlock pistol accurately?
H's look at this logi-
Health is also working
H to begin with, ninjas
against the pirate. Pirates
■ sr iky by definition. don’t exactly get the best
H can’t actually turn food in tibte world. If he’s
Hble, but they are quite
on a particularly poor ship,
H at not being seen.
he probably has scurvy. He
H, on the other hand,
may have old battle wounds
J____
k
p
ira Cameron
that slow him down. Even
if he’s never been in a battle
before, working a sailing
ship is dangerous. You
catch your hand in a pulley
or get hit by a falling spar in
a storm, well then you have
problems.
On the other hand, the
ninja doesn’t spend most
of his time at sea, he’s bet
ter fed and still has all his
limbs. A ninja in the prime
of health makes a pirate
look like a particularly
uncoordinated cow.
For the sake of argu
ment, let’s say the pirate
manages to disarm the ninja.
This would be a rather bad
move on the pirate’s part,
because ninjas know a lot
more about hand-to-hand
fighting; a pirate probably
barely knows how to throw
an affective punch. Now,
instead of a single weapon
the pirate has to keep track
of four weapons: the ninja’s
hands and feet. This does
not bode well for the pirate.
If you set an armed
pirate against a ninja, file
pirate will fail. If you set
an unarmed pirate against
a ninja, the pirate will fail
that much worse. After
all, in Navy SEAL training
they teach you ninjitsu; they
don’t teach you pirate-fu.
Pirates are more
. firn than stuffy old
ninjas
Matt Olson
The Clackamas Print
Flying a jolly roger,
marauding the seas for
booty, shouting and singing
dirty limericks and drinking
your fill. It may be swill,
but it’ll sure get you drunk
If that sounds firn, “it’s a
pirate’s life for you!”
Some stuffy and uptight
people naysay the pirate life
style in favor of something a
little more cut and dry. Why
limit freedom and be stuck
on dry land when you could
be out there sailing in the
salty wind, hunting for the
gold of defenseless traders?
Ninjas were the assas
sins of feudal Japanese cul
ture. They were stealthy,
deadly, clad in black and
stalked their prey for glory
and power. It may sound
ok, but wait until the 12
hour days of training, the
rigorous and fruitless years
of painfill conditioning, and
being called “young grass
hopper;” then where is the
glory of the ninja?
The differ-
ence between 1
ninjas
and 1
pirates is what
A/
you want in life.
Ask yourself
if you are an A
or B type per
sonality. If you
4 Ik
like to spend
all your time
working hard to
make ends meet,
ball versus a b
foot long
a ninja’s humble lifestyle piece of iron, who do you
might be appealing.
think will win? Anyone
On the other hand, exam have weapon envy?
ine the life of a pirate. They
Admittedly, any good
are intimidating, swash ninja won’t expose him
buckling, and they always self enough to get hit with
get the booty. And don’t a deadly cannonball, but
forget, chicks dig pirates. I’d like to see the god
Just look at Johnny Depp in like ninja who can sneak
“Pirates of the Caribbean.”
across waves. Out on the
Depp’s scraggly goa sea the pirate is king; he’s
tee and mustache, drunken the lord of his domain
swagger, and slurred speech and is as stealthy as the
are all unattractive traits in shadow of a shark. No
the average person. Make “landlubber” could sneak
that person a pirate and ' up on a pirate out in open
instantly they’re a sex sym water.
bol and worthy of women’s
Violence doesn’t solve
adoration.
anything, but the threat
Women, drinks, riches of violence can get you
and freedom aren’t the only everything. A ninja may
part of a pirate’s life. They be able to kill well enough,
are fierce fighters armed but a pirate lives well.
with the latest weapons and After all, how great are
ships. They may have to ninjas when Mr. Miyagi
steal all this, but when you can teach a 13-year-old
have a 35-pound cannon boy to kick their asses?
hiking: the daily bane of every student's existence
lurtney O’Byrne
Klackamas Print
It’s 10 a.m. and your first class
[in 15 minutes. You pull into
■favorite parking lot - the one
[short distance from all your
[s, with the wide spaces - in
■words, the parking
■your dreams,
[de spaces that are
Wait - not that
[That one looks
■ But alas, as you
■ your turn, you
Be horrendous teal-
|ed Geo Metro that
lies only the front
■the spot.
Bastards!”
you
Bn, cursing all
[ommuter cars that
■the ability to pull
■ forward, if only
le demonic purpose
[ceiving the eyes
[vers in cars larger
fcrigerators.
Iman, and the big
[. Yet another spot
I be available to
■ not for the hulk-
[uteofadieselcen-
| directly over the
[ng line. Do they
■need two spots, or
| their hogging be
From there, I hike to my class,
which I am either late to, or close
to late to. I am soaking wet and
my shoes are making the most
annoying squeaking noise possi
ble, which discourages my teach
er from ignoring the fact that I
came in late.
Unfortunately, “I had to park
really far away” is not
an acceptable excuse for
being tardy, though mut
tering, “parking sucks!”
will reward you with
many nods and groans
of agreement from your
classmates. And that, my
friends, is because parking
at Clackamas does, in fact,
suck.
There are so many sug
gestions to fix the undeni
able parking problem, but
none really sound prom
ising. Maybe the college
could create a new parking
lot somewhere else and
provide shuttles every 10
minutes.
Students should try to
carpool with a buddy, or
better yet, ride the bus!
While some students do
trust the mighty Tri-Met
to transport them safe
ly to the classrooms of
Clackamas, others, like
myself, are bus-illiterate
Photo illustration by Jeff Sorensen Clackamas Print
avoided if they backed up again
and straightened out?
You cruise the other lots, final
ly settling for the third from last
spot in the second from last row
of a parking lot that is nowhere
near any of your classes. Does
that sound familiar to anyone?
That’s how my day starts off.
C o -E ditors - in -C hief : Ben Maras,
Clackamas Print
James Tombe
C opy E ditors : Katie Weinberg, E. E.
5600 S. Molalla Ave.
[gon City, OR 97045
|)3) 657-6958 ex. 2309
P*e C lackamas Print is a weekly
Istudent publication and is
fcibuted every Wednesday except
finals week.
West
N ews E ditor : Katie Wilson
C ommentary E ditor : Laura Cameron
F eature E ditor : C.J. Ciaramella
S ports E ditor : N. P. Delzell
A&E E ditor : Jadon Triplett
P hoto E ditor : Jeff Sorensen
A d M anager : Sam Krause
A d A ssistant : Megan Cline
S taff W riters ; Frank Jordan,
and would get off at a stop in the
middle of nowhere and probably
end up dead.
As for carpooling, sometimes
none of your friends start school
at the same time you do and
there’s absolutely no reason for
you to sacrifice another hour of
sleep just to catch a ride with
someone who starts before you.
Criticizing a solution is a lot
easier than suggesting one. There
are just too many cars for too few
spaces. Some days, I wish I was a
cripple just so I could get a really
good spot. But then again, I would
be a cripple, so I’d probably have
worse problems than parking.
I wish I could say that less
people should go to our college,
but that would be wrong for so
many reasons, including the fact
that if not for school, I would be
much more than bus-illiterate.
Letter to the editor
Just a short note to thank the CCC Print for the article about the
Music Department in the October 19 issue.
I need to make a few corrections.
Your reporter incorrectly stated that I feel “ the Music Department
gets the proverbial shaft a lot of the time.” Not even close.
I told your reporter that over the past decade or so, and in the cur
rent environment inthe US and in Oregon, the arts and arts education
have been devalued. When there are cuts to be made, so many times
the cuts begin with the arts. This has not been the case at CCC, where
the arts are held to be equally as important as the other disciplines.
The Niemeyer Center is evidence that the college has put their
money where their mouth is in terms of support for the arts.
Further, I stated that our being allowed such a huge voice in the
planning and construction of the Niemeyer Center, and that it came out
so well, is a testament to the health of the college. Your reporter seems
to have transposed some of my comments around
Thanks again for an otherwise accurate article.
Tom Wakeling
Chair, Music Department
P roduction A ssistants : Christina
Copeland, Megan Koler, Tayo
Stalnaker, Kyle Steele, Jesse
Arguello
Matthew Olsen, Tayo Stalnaker,
Courtney CXByme, Mike Giùdice,
Jimi McDonnell, Gabe Stone, Joe
Piazzisi, Megan Koler, Kimberly P hotographers ; Andy Zehrung
Maier, Elizabeth Hitz, Adam J.
D epartment A dvisor : Linda Vogt
Manley
D epartment A ssistant : Pat Lichen
G oals : The C lackamas Print aims
to report the news in an honest,
unbiased, professional manner.
The opinions expressed do not
necessarily reflect those of the stu
dent body, college administration,
its faculty or The Print. E-mail
comments to chiefed@dackamas.
edu.